> I disagree. Suppose, for example, that we designed a new mail protocol > (call it X.399 if you like) and convinced everyone to implement it on their > systems. If it worked at least as well as SMTP and additionally kept spam > out, I'll bet it would be a short time before the only folks using SMTP > were the spammers. seems farfetched. it's hard to imagine how a mail protocol could thwart spam except to require authentication for all mail. if you can manage to deploy an authentication system at all (and the infrastructure that is required to make it work), it is probably easier to retro-fit SMTP to do that than to deploy a completely new protocol. the real difficulty is getting the authentication infrastructure in place. and BTW, this problem is not limited to email. Keith